Saturday, October 24, 2009

Good Things--Finally!

A few good things have FINALLY happened. Most important, we celebrated Eliza's 3rd birthday! Having a party with our friends and other families from our compound made it feel as close to normal as it could have. We had tons of cake, lots of presents, and an incredible amount of noise (thanks to the party horns I bought for the kids). We officially have some memories--good ones-- from this place.



We also got a couple of boxes from the US, one from my Mom and one from Hubby's parents. The former contained heavenly things like beef jerky, Special K Fruit & Yogurt cereal (which costs $10 a box in Doha), Funyuns (which generally don't exist in Doha), children's Benadryl (again, non-existent here), trail mix, and my monthly Southern Living magazine--yay for wonderful things! You can't imagine how much you appreciate things like this until you're living halfway around the world from them. The latter box contained Eliza's birthday gifts, and she loved everything!



Our wire recall finally went through, and we got our $5K back in our US account. Now we officially have money in the bank...like savings. Our plan has been/continues to be to live off of one salary and put the other salary in the bank until we have our savings built up to cover 3 months living expenses, the cost of replacing our living room and bedroom furniture that we sold when we moved, and a few other things we plan to buy when we get back home. In the meantime, we'll still be able to pay off credit card debt as we go, with all of them paid off by the end of the year. Sometime in late Spring, we'll start whacking away at the student loan debt, which will feel so good!



Hubby, Hannah, and Eliza made some memories of their own yesterday, when they took a trip to the inland sea.

(Not our picture, but ours don't look much different). This view if from the top of one of the sand dunes, which surround the sea. I had to stay home with Amelia, as the drive is 2 hours each way, and there's no place for a baby to nap in the middle of the desert. They caravaned with several families from our compound and some friends who work for other universities in Education City, and the girls had a blast. Hannah and her friends slid down sand dunes on their tummies, and Eliza enjoyed watching everyone try to get one of the vehicles out of the "goop" as she called the sandy-muddy mess. The geological phenomenon there is evidently quite something to see.... Oil is actually percolating to the surface!! You can dig just a few inches in parts of the sand, and you start to see oil. Crazy stuff...

So yeah...I won't say things have gotten better for me in the larger sense. I'd simply say that we've finally had some good days. I got my debit card for our local bank account, and in about a week, we're going to apply for a credit card and two vehicle loans. We'll see how that goes....

3 comments:

Intlxpatr said...

I started blogging because I wanted to keep some record of my time overseas, and because journaling just doesn't do it for me. You need to write more often. You are already getting used to some things, and things are becoming normal that you haven't yet written about. What about the supermarkets? What about the traffic? This is material for that book you will write one day, AcadeMama, and there is so much you will have forgotten if you don't document. Even your heartaches - it's all material. :-) You're doing fine. It's all "schwaya schwaya" (little by little)

AcadeMama said...

Intlxpatr: thanks for stopping by and for your suggestions! i do need to blog more, simply because there's so much left to describe. i'm working hard, though, to follow a general policy to try not to let my blog be "the bitching place"...all negative, all the time. in addition, i'm hoping that the first book i write is my revised dissertation, which is what takes up most of my work days. and as you know, the work day is much shorter here, so when i get home, it's all family time, and then i still get up with the baby every other night...A very tired AcadeMama 5 out of 7 days of the week.

P.S. Is there ever a "normal" in Doha (with the exception of crazy traffic)? Somehow, I've gotten used to things, but they still don't seem normal...

Intlxpatr said...

You will think I am crazy when I say this, AcadeMama, but if you stay in town when everyone else leaves, it can be nice! June and July, the traffic dwindles to only a little bad. It's different when you have kids with school schedules . . . I stay off the roads as much as I can during "get the kids to school time".